This past week in reader’s workshop, we looked at words that were important to our topic. We practiced with a non-fiction book about Earth Day. We found the words recycle, pollution, electricity, and conserve to be important words. These words helped us learn and teach others about what we read about. We kept track of our book’s important words on a reading bookmark.

We remembered how important it is to understand what we are reading and with some of these new topics and tricky vocabulary words, we needed to use some of the tools that nonfiction books provide for us to figure out what the new words mean. We checked out the glossary for definitions, but also looked at the pictures, checked to see if there were any captions on the page, and reread the words in that section to look for clues. We also remembered that we should think about our topic, use our accuracy strategies, try spot and dot, and check out the word ending when we come to a tricky word.

This week, when we picked out our books, we picked a topic with our partners. It made it really fun to meet with our reading partners this week and share what we already know and then to touch base throughout the week and see what new things we had each learned and compare our books with each other.

We jumped back into reading workshop this week by helping ourselves get ready to read new books by first asking what we already knew about our topic before reading. When we pulled out a new book, we asked ourselves, “What do I already know?” This helps get our mind ready to make connections to new ideas. We spent time comparing the books in our ‘topic bags’ and really thinking about the facts we were learning. They were able to find examples in multiples books that taught the same information, so they knew that fact must be true. We were able to share with our partners about things we had learned.

As we are learning new information on our topics, we want to keep track of our thinking. Our books were filled with post it notes marking pages to show new learning and the kids had a blast sharing all this new information with the class.

In Reader’s Workshop, we have continued becoming experts on the topics we are reading about! The students have each picked a topic that interests them and then filled a bag with books that focus on that big idea. Some of the books from their topic are nonfiction and some are fiction. The first graders spend time each day reading through the books on their topic to see what they can learn and teach others about their topic.

Early in the week, we noticed that when we read our fiction stories, even though we know these stories aren’t true stories, we can find true facts within the stories. We shared some facts that we learned from our fiction stories and noticed that some we knew were true because we had read about it in another text, heard someone talk about it, or we had experienced it ourselves before. Some of the facts seemed true, but we weren’t quite sure. So, we decided that we would need to do some more research in the other books from our topic and see if we could find any other books that shared that same information. These little first grade researchers had a blast digging into their books to see what they could find.

We then spent time sharing how some of the books we were reading were alike. We made text to text connections to share our thinking.

“The book Hi, Fly Guy reminds me of the book Diary of a Fly because I learned that flies like to eat gross foods in both books.”

We have had the chance to allow our ‘local experts’ to share some of the facts that they have learned and as they share their cool facts, they are also sparking interest in their classmates. The first graders have all had a chance to pick more than one area of expertise and we will continue with this unit of reading for a few more weeks. Be sure to ask your student about the topics they have studied so far, what they have learned, and what they might want to pick for their next area of expertise!

We had an exciting week in Reader’s Workshop this week! First, we finished up our study of spot and dot. On our last day, the kids were able to use i-pads to practice the spot and dot strategy with the tricky words from their just right books. After recording on the Show Me app, we shared our multi-syllable words with our partners. We are SOOOO excited to continue using this strategy!!!

Later in the week, we began a new unit of study. During this unit, the kids will become experts on different topics that are fascinating to them. We will be reading nonfiction books, fiction books, magazines, songs, and poems about the same topic to grow our expertise. In order to begin this cross-genre study, we had to reorganize our classroom library. This was a BIG job, but the kids were such wonderful helpers! We sorted all of our books by topics. Some of these topics included “Insects”, “Dogs”, “Dangerous Animals”, “Animals that Can Fly”, “Animals that Change”, “Weather”, “Famous People”, “Jobs”, “Sports” and many, many more!!

This coming week, we will choose new topics on which to become experts! I can’t wait to hear about the new things they will learn!

This week, we focused on reading fluency. We started off the week with two-person plays. The kids each got one to perform with their partners. Throughout the week, we worked on decoding tricky words, and then rereading to focus on scooping and adding feeling into our voices. By Friday, they were ready to perform their plays. We matched the partners up with another group that had a different play and had them show off their reading fluency. The kids had a blast with these silly stories!

This past week in reading workshop, we spent time growing our independent reading stamina. The kids worked hard to…

Be URGENT! (quickly find a spot and get right to work!)

Stay inonespot!

Work quietly! Shhhhhh!

Warm up to your books and point to the words when you read!

Read theWHOLE TIME…build your stamina!

The kids have gotten quite good at finding books around the room that are ‘just right’ books to keep in their book boxes. As the kids were reading this week, we noticed that some kids finished all the books in their book boxes and needed to start all over reading their books again. This lead us into discussions of how readers set goals for how many books they will read each day. And we introduced a bookmark that they used to set a goal and then keep track with tally marks to see how many books they actually read that day. Before each reading block, the kids would think about how they did the day before and think about the book choices they had in their book boxes and then set a goal for how many books they would read that day. We tracked our goals for a few days to see if our numbers were growing in how many books we were able to read each day. It also helped us notice if we actually had picked books that were ‘just right’ for us as readers. All in all, they spent a ton of time reading this week and building great reading habits! Way to go first graders!

This week, we began readers’ workshop. This is such a wonderful time in our classroom. We have enjoyed reading some great stories together and we have started building the foundation of our independent reading time. Readers get better at reading by practicing, so we focused this week on building their independence for reading by themselves (read to self time). We are working together to figure out the best routines that will help us be successful during this time. So far we have the following:

Just like great readers do, the kids have learned how to pick books that interest them and is ‘Just Right’ for them. We used the five finger approach. The students pick a book and then open to any page. They read one page and every time they come to a word they don’t know, they would put one of their five fingers down. If they were left with no fingers up at the end of that one page, then the book is too tricky. If they still have fingers up, then the book is ‘Just Right!’ It has also been fun to see their confidence and enthusiasm build with their independent reading time as we practice picking out and reading books each day.

As we added more ‘just right’ books to our book boxes each day, we also worked on picking a good spot in the room to read that wasn’t going to be too distracting. The kids have been working hard to find spots that aren’t too close to other first graders where they can get right to work.

We wanted to help them make sure they were reading the whole time, so we gave them a sticker for the side of their book box that we have used as a reminder each day. The sticker tells them that they should: FIRST, empty out their book box. SECOND, warm up to read a book. THIRD, read the words of that book. Once they finish a book, they put the book back into their book box, so that they could keep track of which books they had read.

In Reader’s Workshop, we have become experts on so many topics. Two weeks ago, we worked on looking carefully at the words in our books.

First, we learned how important it is for us to be talking to our reading partner about our topic and all that we learn! The more we talk the better comprehension we have. We can also help our partner by sharing our reactions to their learning and asking more questions! Throughout the week different partner groups were recorded and displayed on the projector for all of us to learn from!

Later in the week, we compared the books in our book box. In two of our Earth books, we noticed that they taught the same thing. They both taught us that we should turn off the water when we brush our teeth to conserve this precious resource. We also saw something different about our Earth books. One book taught us about many ways to save the Earth, and the other only focused on water.

At the end of the week, we looked at words that were important to our topic. We practiced with a non-fiction book about Earth Day. We found the words recycle, pollution, electricity, and conserve to be important words. These words helped us learn and teach others about what we read about. We kept track of our book’s important words in our reading notebook.

Finally, we remembered that we should think about our topic, use our accuracy strategies, spot and dot, and check out the word ending when we come to a tricky word.

In Reader’s Workshop, we have continued our work on becoming experts on the topics we are reading about! We started by noticing how some of the books we were reading were alike. We made text to text connections to share our thinking.

“The book Hi Fly Guy reminds me of the book Diary of a Fly because I learned that flies like to eat gross foods in both books.”

We then helped ourselves get ready to read new books by first asking what we already knew about our topic before reading. When we pulled out a new book, we asked ourselves, “What do I already know?” This helps get our mind ready to make connections to new ideas.

As we are learning new information on our topics, we wanted to keep track of our thinking. We have done this in the past with our sticky notes, so we decided to use them again to help us with our expert books. Since we did such a great job tracking all that we learned, we had so much to share on the ipads at the end of the week!!!Way to go first graders!! I can’t wait to see what fascinating topics you will study next week!